<p>At our school, a food fight could easily escalate into something a lot worse. I think you messed up. Everyone always seems to be sorry…not for what they did, but because they were caught and punished. Maybe you’ve learned something?</p>
<p>“as I expressed in my original post, is that provided I do a good job of explaining my situation, is it possible to bring myself back up to the point of zero net loss?”</p>
<p>Probably not. However you explain it, your behavior was immature and impulsive. Top colleges want to admit students who are leaders in a good way, not students who follow the crowd when trouble is occurring.</p>
<p>Whether you’ll get into the top colleges, I don’t know. I do believe, however, that your actions reduced your chances of gaining admission to such colleges, and I don’t think that there’s anything you can do now to keep what you did from hurting your chances.</p>
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<p>Me, too! :)</p>
<p>As the parent of 2 kids who never even got a detention in school, that doesn’t mean that I think “naughty” behavior deserves suspensions or expulsions. </p>
<p>The point of punishments is this…</p>
<p>1) discourage the child from ever doing it again.</p>
<p>2) discourage other kids (who learn of the punishment) from ever doing anything like that, either.</p>
<p>Giving detentions, Saturday clean-up days, etc, achieves this for “naughty” behavior that doesn’t rise to the level that stealing, cheating, weapons possesion, drug possession does.</p>
<p>The point is NOT to punish the kid in a way that the punishment is rather never-ending for “naughty” behavior.</p>
<p>I hope the OP is able to get into the schools that he wants to. </p>
<p>There are many children of forum members who’ve done a lot worse things (but the school never found out - but their parents sure knew!), and those kids weren’t kept from being admitted to their college choices. </p>
<p>There isn’t a parent on this forum that has said, “Junior got drunk last night, so I’m going to notify his colleges so they’ll consider that major offense during the admissions process.”</p>
<p>Karma is going to bite you in the @$$ OP lol.</p>
<p>But in all seriousness, I think you need to suck up the punishment and move on. I cannot believe that a smart student such as yourself who’s at the top of your class can even watch let alone participate in this. I’m sure you know that chanting only motivates people to do stupid things even more. God knows if one of those kids got hit, had a temper, had a gun, and started shooting the place up. All because of your little fun ‘chant’.</p>
<p>“The point is NOT to punish the kid in a way that the punishment is rather never-ending for “naughty” behavior.”</p>
<p>The OP’s suspension won’t punish him forever. It may decrease his chances of getting into his top choices, but after he goes to college, no one will care about his high school suspension.</p>
<p>Whether he gets into a top school will have a long lasting impact on OP. Most of those top students have busted their butt for 4 years.</p>
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<p>I couldn’t help but smile at this…It seems normal to expect kids to carry guns in school, without school administrator dealing with that problem. And we worry about kids having food fight.</p>
<p>“Whether he gets into a top school will have a long lasting impact on OP. Most of those top students have busted their butt for 4 years.”</p>
<p>Sure. Whatever school the OP gets into will have a long lasting impact on him.</p>
<p>Probably the vast majority of the top students who get into the very top schools haven’t had any disciplinary problems. Even if the OP hadn’t been suspended, his being disciplined for encouraging a food fight would still hurt him at top schools, places where the administrators want to admit students who are able to lead with thoughtfulness and integrity, not students who’ll follow the misbehaving crowd.</p>
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<p>WHAT???</p>
<p>You don’t have to report detentions when you apply to top schools. And this infraction should have been handled with work-detail detentions.</p>
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<p>How would you know? If many kids’ schools handled such things differently (such as giving detentions), their top schools would never know.</p>
<p>And, I’ve known kids who’ve done a lot worse that have gotten into top schools.</p>
<p>Wait a minute…didn’t momofwildchild tell us stories of her son’s many antics? Didn’t he go ivy or similar? (I recall some pretty wild stories from her a few years ago)</p>
<p>I think those adcoms also realize we are all human and are not perfect. If I remember correctly many students at those top tier schools did their share of disordering protest when we were younger, and illegally taking over administration buildings. </p>
<p>I really, really hope those adcoms are not just admitting students who are “robotic” perfect students. I view it more as a character flaw when someone is too perfect. We learn to be thoughtful and to be a person with integrity. As someone with grown children, I am still learning. Sometimes I could be more thoughtful than other times. But I would hope my friends and colleagues wouldn’t cut me off because I fell short once.</p>
<p>Not everything needs to be zero tolerance.</p>
<p>Oldfort: I guess I was exaggerating(sp?) a little bit. However, you’d be surprised at how some kids could have a nasty temper and pretty much cause the same thing to happen(without the guns)</p>
<p>And I guess some schools don’t have adequate security…</p>
<p>I guess I’m just more of a stickler for the rules. I can understand breaking them if things are obviously not right or just, but breaking them for a stupid chant is a little bit out there…</p>
<p>
I think most people consider those to be equally as serious violations as the ones listed above.</p>
<p>Also,
</p>
<p>Robots don’t lead.</p>
<p>"I think those adcoms also realize we are all human and are not perfect. If I remember correctly many students at those top tier schools did their share of disordering protest when we were younger, and illegally taking over administration buildings. "</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between nonviolently taking over a building to protest a war, for instance, and being involved in or helping to incite a food fight. I’ve been involved in nonviolent protests, but never participated in a food fight and never received any kind of discipline from any schools that I attended.</p>
<p>I also think that students involved in nonviolent takeovers of their high schools would have a hard time gaining admission to many schools including top ones. </p>
<p>" I view it more as a character flaw when someone is too perfect. "</p>
<p>I want to know what “too perfect” is. If “too perfect” refers to students who don’t cheat or do anything against school rules, I don’t see any problem with their being “too perfect.” There are some people who don’t need to break rules to learn to behave with integrity.</p>
<p>“But I would hope my friends and colleagues wouldn’t cut me off because I fell short once.”</p>
<p>I want to know what it would mean to “fall short.” One murder, rape or armed robbery? Presumably that’s not what you’re referring to. I doubt that friends and colleagues would end a relationship with a student due to one food fight, but that’s not the situation here. It’s not as if the OP was expelled for encouraging a food fight. </p>
<p>If the OP were my kid, I’d be ticked off at him because I’d have tried to teach my kids to at the very least not encourage disruptive behavior in others. I wouldn’t be going to the school to complain about my kid’s suspension.</p>
<p>“Robots don’t lead.”</p>
<p>True. And top schools aren’t looking for robots. They are looking for students with the ability to lead with integrity instead of leading others to break rules for no good reason.</p>
<p>Just to make it clear,
</p>
<p>NSM >>>
I want to know what it would mean to “fall short.” One murder, rape or armed robbery?
<<<<</p>
<p>Again, people are equating what should be the equivalent of a speeding ticket to a first degree felony. Don’t compare apples with oranges. </p>
<p>Ok, so you never broke any school rules. Have you ever gotten a ticket? Speeding, perhaps? Parking ticket? Well, then let’s just treat that more severely and take away your license for a year and make you report it when you apply for a job. Since you want to equate minor things to rape and murder, let’s equate a speeding ticket to a felony too. After all, someone could get very hurt when people are speeding.</p>
<p>i’d like to ask another question. a good friend of mine had a significant role in planning the food fight, and is being punished much more severely. he has been suspended for 8 days and has an expulsion meeting tomorrow (there is a chance he will be expelled).</p>
<p>he is excellent in school and extracurriculars, he is the class president, and he is the strongest leader I know (even if a lapse in judgment caused him to use it to a bad end).</p>
<p>What are the implications of a longer suspension, or an expulsion? If he is expelled, would you reccomend he spends some time in community college, then applies as a transfer? any thoughts welcome.</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>My whole quote was: “I want to know what it would mean to “fall short.” One murder, rape or armed robbery? Presumably that’s not what you’re referring to.” As you can see, I didn’t equate encouraging a food fight to rape, robbery, or murder, but did want to know what you would referred to when you said you hoped your friends and colleagues wouldn’t drop you if you were to “fall short” once. </p>
<p>I think that encouraging a food fight is wrong, an action that could lead to problems such as a riot, injuries, serious damage to a building. At the very least, food fights lead to a big mess that someone has to clean up. While the OP says he helped clean it up, I imagine he did this because the school forced him to. I doubt that his idea of food fight “fun” included cleaning up the resulting mess.</p>
<p>I think that the OP is smart enough to have known better than to have encouraged the food fight, and he probably could have done something to try to discourage the fight. </p>
<p>As for the comparison to a speeding or parking ticket, I think that a 3-day suspension for encouraging a food fight is a similar punishment as being fined for a parking or speeding ticket. The punishment seems appropriate to me. It’s not as if the school system could fine the student as is the case when one gets parking tickets.</p>
<p>northstar, frankly i am getting tired of your accusatory assumptions. I cleaned it up out of my own volition, as did the rest of the school.</p>
<p>I would appreciate it if the rest of you could give your thoughts on my new question.</p>
<p>"i’d like to ask another question. a good friend of mine had a significant role in planning the food fight, and is being punished much more severely. he has been suspended for 8 days and has an expulsion meeting tomorrow (there is a chance he will be expelled).</p>
<p>he is excellent in school and extracurriculars, he is the class president, and he is the strongest leader I know (even if a lapse in judgment caused him to use it to a bad end)."</p>
<p>There probably still are some colleges that would accept him. There are colleges that accept the vast majority of students who apply. The colleges that will accept him now are likely to be a tier or two below the ones that would be matches for him based on his scores and grades.</p>
<p>Your friend also could take a gap year and do something productive such as work a fulltime job or do fulltime volunteer work through an organization like Americorps. That will help him prove to colleges that he is mature enough to be able to go to college without having behavior problems. </p>
<p>This is not a sarcastic question. Why would you and your friend think that engaging in a food fight would be fun? What’s fun about hurling food and getting hit by food? What’s fun about ruining people’s clothes and making a big mess? I didn’t see the fun in such an activity when I was your age, and I don’t see the fun now. Please explain to me what’s appealing about it to you and your friends.</p>
<p>And where is the fun in making a huge mess that you plan to clean up? I don’t get it.</p>
<p>Asking a question about what makes an activity “fun” is not going to lead you any answers. “Fun” is a subjective quality, and it is nearly impossible to define what characteristics lead to making a particular activity “fun”.</p>
<p>What I see is a smart kid, with more personality than the quiet, mousy bookworm who never talks to anyone but can analyze Hemingway, who decided to participate in something interesting. It was juvenile, sure. It was a case of poor judgment, sure; the consequences of the food fight were obviously bigger than he realized at the time.</p>
<p>But, after the day was over, the problems facing the school had nearly vanished. The cafeteria had been cleaned up, and that was the extent of what needed to be done.</p>
<p>Here, I’ll say that again. The school was -not harmed- besides being dirty, which was later -remedied by the students who perpetrated the event-.</p>
<p>It was juvenile, yes. It was immature, yes. But it was ultimately -trivial-. Even the top leaders in the world have lapses in judgment. My mother, the most law-abiding woman I know, got a speeding ticket for accidentally going 10 over. The crime, in this case, was a -harmless food fight-. It was a disruption of the normal events, but it DIDN’T HURT ANYBODY.</p>
<p>I fail to see how such a trivial event, analogous to making a joke in poor taste, deserves such strict punishment, especially for the student body president.</p>
<p>I think it’s a joke for you to honestly believe that someone who partakes in a harmless food fight deserves suspension, let alone the expulsion some students are facing.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, without knowing any other facet of your character (and, admittedly, it is unfair to judge you), I will hazard to guess that you are the kind of person who embraces political correctness. Is my judgment correct?</p>